


i kinda like it when you bring me to my knees.

by thackeryisatop (orphan_account)



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind AU, M/M, Sci-Fi Elements, With a twist!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26060647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/thackeryisatop
Summary: Jose gets his emotional memory deleted by an experimental procedure; and he’s never been better- without the past at the back of his mind, he can’t imagine why more people haven’t volunteered for the procedure- until he has to go on tour with his ex, and Brock finds out that he remembers absolutely nothing of their time together.The Branjie Boys “Memory Loss”- (sort of?) AU!
Relationships: Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	i kinda like it when you bring me to my knees.

**Author's Note:**

> CW: mild descriptions of (fantasy) drug use and a medical procedure.

The ads start on TV at the end of the year. 

Just in time for Christmas, Jose passes a billboard facing the back exit of the club where he’s supposed to toast to almost another rotation around the sun, glittering in the headlights of dozens of cars that inch their way up the street, the hazy heat of a California December leaving only the cotton snow and cut-out evergreens in the windows untouched. 

_ Wouldn’t you like to forget? _

It’s a brand new scientific discovery, and they call it a Biological Reset State on the YouTube video that Jose’s finger can’t help but tap on, at the very top of his recommended feed for the night. It’s a switch they can throw in your brain; that wipes out all your memories in one single action, taking less time than Jose had taken to stand in line and renew his driver’s license last week. 

“ _\- some of the earliest patients did report some pain that lasts over time, but it’s gone completely in a couple of months, a little bit like getting a tattoo._ ”, says the man in his white coat on the screen, impossibly small and bright against the black backdrop of Jose’s dressing room, where he can’t help but run his fingers over the eyes of the sphinx on his chest, the sharp points of his tattooed fingers disappearing mirror as he dips his brush into a pan of blue eyeshadow. He’s listening more intently, while he lines his eyes with a color that sparkles in the corners, like the sun peeking over a spring sunrise.

“ _-But, our memories build who we are, and more importantly, they teach us what to do. If I didn’t remember that I burned my hand on a hot stove, wouldn’t I just keep doing it again?_ ”, the other person on the screen, a woman in a deep pink and yellow pantsuit, asks, looking down at the notes in her lap. 

“-Now this hoe got the right ideas…” Jose mutters to himself, wiping down his fingertips with a little scented wet wipe, the way his mother had taught him to do when he had first started doing his makeup for school, to keep everything from getting messy. 

“ _Not if you were taught to stay away from a stove. You see, The Procedure targets what’s called your episodic memory. That’s how you remember that you burned your hand, but it’s not where the knowledge that touching something hot isn’t the best idea lives._ ” 

The Doctor huffs out a deep breath. 

“ _Let’s say that you learned to swim, as a kid, right? When you’re in college, you almost drown in an accident, and since then, you’ve been afraid of going in the water. Your body knows what it’s doing, and all that getting a Wipe would do is cut off the electrical impulse in your brain that tells you that ever happened. Everything that you really need to remember stays with you._ ” 

He even laughs a little at that, the sound of it high and scratchy from the speakers in Jose’s phone. 

“ _No one is going to forget their kids, or how to do their jobs, you’ll probably even still remember your password for your email account, and how to make your favorite recipes, because everything that makes you, well you, stays perfectly intact. It’s all of the rest of it that adds up and makes it harder to be in the world, that goes right away._ ”

Jose caps his lipstick, the same shade as the champagne he’ll pop later at the bar, glittering like the flutes that hang behind the bartenders, who all know him like family by now. If not from all the times Vanessa’s been on their stage, then for every weekend he’s stumbled in with his best friends, downing a dozen shots before last call; screaming with laughter when they all get kicked out, and 2 AM blooms before them, warm and infinite. 

“Hey, Vanjie-“

“-Bitch!”

His phone clatters to the floor, the voice behind him startling him enough that he swipes through half of his station before he recognizes it, the dressing room mirror sprayed with a stream of dry shampoo. 

“Shit!”

“You were supposed to be on stage five minutes ago! Not even Mayhem takes this long to do her eyes.”, Morgan McMichaels, her blonde wig fraying at the very ends from a lifetime of heat styling, called from the dressing room door, her nails tapping impatiently on the knob. “ Hurry your pussy up, bitch!”

“Okay, okay-“

Jose tucked his phone back into his makeup case, checking his reflection one last time in the mirror, pressing down on Vanessa’s perfectly laid baby hairs, shooting her a little wink to make sure her contacts were in place. 

“What are you doing in here anyway? FaceTiming Brooke Lynn? Betcha get a lot of sitting on her face time, huh?”, Morgan giggled, playfully shoving at Vanessa's shoulder as the two of them snake up underneath the flickering lights of the backstage hallway.

“Bitch! If y’all wanna see Brooke Lynn so bad, book her yourself!”, Vanjie shoots back with ease, the memories that used to taste so bitter at the simple mention of her ex, neatly faded into a fondness that only makes Vanessa grin every time someone thinks they’re slick, dropping her name like that. 

She follows Morgan up a few loose metal stairs, that everyone is always after the manager to fix, and takes the mic when it’s offered, twirling on her mark, handing it off when her music starts. 

_ “Now are y’all ready to have the most sickening night of your lives.-“ _

* * *

He won’t think about it for a couple of months after that, because Vanessa is on tour in Asia, and Jose is too busy sipping on real deal Japanese saki, and snapping pictures of everyone falling asleep on the tour buses in various stages of undress for future blackmail, to watch any more of the news cycle than the headlines that cycle through the airport screens while they all try to wolf down breakfast; a dozen drag queens all rubbing their eyes and scrolling their phones in another nameless, neon-drenched terminal. 

More people are getting the Wipe. 

Some people think it’s morally reprehensible. 

One person is grinning up at Jose from his digital copy of the SkyMall magazine, from an article that talks about how getting Wiped was the very best thing that ever happened to him, because now he’s _hot_ and _rich_ and doesn’t remember _ever_ being bullied _or_ having to go on that diet in college. 

It’s vapid and self-serving, and Jose knows he’s being lied to as much as anything the Kardashians have ever tried to sell him, until he flicks to the last page of the article, where this man has the absolute audacity to be captured in a deep kiss with his same annoying-looking husband, quoted as saying “-before I got Wiped, something always stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t realize that no one saw where I had messed up in the past, and everything that I’d been through, didn’t matter. Without all of that, I was worthy of love.” 

He closes the article, and turns his attention back to his phone, all full of videos so loud that the audio crunches up, and blurry pictures where he can only see bursts of light, the girls Vanessa wraps her arms around in the lineups all so eager to tell her how much they love her. Their energy is electric, the cities all blurred together in the back of his mind, every moment seeming to be something that he would have never imagined was happening to him, just a second before. 

So he doesn’t question it, when they land at the airport and scurry into their hotel rooms, and Derrick pulls him by the shoulder to the side, trapping the two of them in between their suitcases in the hallways. 

“Do you want to try it?”, he asks, winking up at Jose. 

“What-?”

“The Wipe, bitch.”, Derrick giggles, and they push past the elevators, into a corner hidden beside the ice machine. “I saw you reading on the flight.” 

“I’m fucked up enough without messing with my whole ass brain.”, he laughs, shaking his head. “C’mon. That shit isn’t the tea and we both know it.” 

“But I’m serious, Nebraska got me some of this when I was back home.”, says Derrick, tapping on a carrying case attached to the top of his suitcase. Jose can hear little glass bottles clink inside like wind chimes, and he perks up for a moment, searching Derrick’s face for a hint that he’s only kidding. 

“You can microdose it, and just forget something small. The first time I did, I seriously thought I’d never had Diet Coke in my life. I fell right out when I had my first rum and coke and almost cried.” 

_ “You did not!” _

_ “Did too.” _

They push their suitcases into their shared room, the lights already low over their beds in the early morning. 

“How do you tell what it’s gonna take out?”, Jose asks, throwing himself over the bed on his side. 

“I dunno. There was some coke on the counter, and I just looked at it, I guess?” 

Derrick shrugs, and pours the bottles from their case, dropping like dead weight on his bed. 

“Pull up a picture of pizza on your phone and see what- drink some and we’ll order up. Imagine, you get to have your very first pizza, again!”, Derrick nearly cheers, and even though Jose wonders; if he might be too excited, he reaches for his phone in his pocket, and saves the first picture of cheese pizza he can find. 

“This like acid?”

Jose picks up the bottle, shaking it so that the sediment at the very bottom, clouds the clear liquid at the top. 

“You wish. You drink it with water, wait a little, look around. It takes five minutes, -ish.”

“What if I look at you, and tomorrow I’m like who the fuck that is, when we gotta be doing the host gig together?”, he laughs, poking a finger against Derrick’s arm. 

Everything seems unreal; floating in the middle hours between midnight and morning, anyway. There’s nothing that tells him it isn’t just a Dream, when Derrick shows him how to mix it together, foggy liquid against too-clear water, and to tilt his head just so, it won’t burn his throat on the way down. 

It hurts, like a pinch to the center of his brain, his eyes blurring in the corners as he forces himself to focus on the slice of- _bread_

_ cheese bread?  _

-in the center of screen of his phone. 

_“Dude, what the fuck?”,_ he blinks up at Derrick, whose saucer-wide eyes, deep and brown, glitter with laughter. 

“This is _pizza_?”, he asks again, pointing at his phone.

“So you still remember it?” 

“Yeah but like, I’ve never had it like this. Isn’t there usually pineapples and all’a that in this? That’s pizza right?” 

“There’s different kinds, you weirdo.”, Derrick teases, his hand warm around the top of Jose’s knee. 

“Not just like, with nothing on them. Maybe it’s a Japan thing, but damn, you wanna order some in? Since we ain’t getting any trade, we might as well just try the food they got, right?”

Derrick’s eyes are wide and beaming, and he finds a menu on their bedside table, his fingers clicking over the buttons of the hotel phone. 

Jose doesn’t feel high, or even very tired, throwing himself back against the pillows on his bed, as the ceiling swirls above him while they wait. 

Derrick’s right- the very first time he has cheese pizza; without tangy pineapples and sharp green peppers, no olives to add gravity to the salty, greasy, cheese- he can tell it must be his very favorite, oil trailing down his mouth, pooling in a napkin as he wolfs down his first slice. 

It’s warm and soft, the edges just crispy enough that they crunch between his teeth, the crust deliciously doughy and just a little sweet, dulling the sharpness of the flavours in his mouth. 

“Why don’t have this at home?”, he groans, and Derrick sits across from him, folding his own slice into his mouth. “This is the _good_ shit!” 

Jose doesn’t understand, but Derrick starts to laugh, and the box on the bed between them bounces with him. 

“Oh, but we _do_.” 

-

At home, weeks later; Jose hardly thinks of he and Derrick’s pizza night, the memory sinking deep behind all of the others: the arenas and the fans and the nights he spends on the bus, tangled up with his best friends, taking shots while they drive through the midnight country, all of their adventures the secrets each will take forward forever when they land back home.

He orders an Uber to his mother’s, and waits in the living room for her to brew coffee and pour sugar into two cups, steaming in her hands while his eyes dart around the room; the mantle above the fireplace so empty, in a way that doesn’t quite click. 

Until she puts down their drinks on the little table in front of the couch, and her eyes are so disturbingly clear when she looks at him; wide and filled with a sort of longing love, that Jose knows instantly what she’s done. 

“You don’t remember me?”, he asks, almost choking on his words. 

“Of course I do. I know that I love you, more than anything in the world.”, she says, and those words float between them until she grins a little, and offers him his coffee. “Everything else, was just becoming a burden. So you know, now there’s a little bit more space up here.” 

She taps on the side of her head, and Jose nods slowly along. 

In the space where there used to be that uncle of his that died; their cross country moves and the dead-end jobs and dead-end men, and every sleepless night raising three boys alone; he finds himself filling up; pulling his phone from his pocket without another word, and telling her everything she can about the life he lives now because of all of it. 

She’s happier than he’s ever known; and that makes the decision easy. 

He’d like _that_ , too. 

-

“Are you still gonna remember me after?”, Silky asks him, one night after they’re laying across from each other on the couch, the two of them having shared a blunt on the balcony; staring up over the very last of the Los Angeles sunset before the sky turned dark entirely. 

“Yeah, duh. I just won’t remember the specifics of shit that we done, but we’re still gonna be ride or die.” 

“How we gonna be ride or die without the shit that made us tight, though?” 

“Cause we was like, bonded already or some shit. It’s on Google, you just gotta look it up. Like, I’m gonna forget that one time we got kicked but of the club but I’m not gonna wake up and not remember we mean shit to each other.” 

“It was a lot of times we got kicked outta the club, bitch!” 

Jose lets himself laugh at that, and squeezes Silky’s hand in his own. 

“So we just gotta do it again after. I’m probably gonna cry the very first time and think I got banned for life!” 

“You are _so_ fucking dumb.”,Silky sighs, but he grips his fingers tightly, too, and shakes his head. “Guess all I gotta remember is where we parked at, cause I know this hospital parking ain’t the tea.” 

Morning dawns as in a blind, sleepless rush; Jose’s eyes shielded behind his sunglasses, not quite willing to look up at the skyscrapers and streets, the alleys and the airport that they fly past on the highway, scared that perhaps he’ll realize he’ll miss something, and call the whole thing off. 

_There’s nothing worth missing_ , he reminds himself, _because you’ll get to do it all again, and better_. 

_ Think of better!  _

The attendant inside the procedure room preps him easily, letting him get comfortable underneath a blanket, the sheets cool and fresh underneath his skin, before she dims the lights, and tilts his bed to look straight upwards at an empty; black ceiling. 

_“You’re lucky. Thirty years is nothing to Wipe.”_ , she says, her fingers rubbing a cold cream over where she’ll inject the same thing that Jose remembers so clearly now, drinking with Derrick so they could laugh about cheese pizza. 

_ Stupid!  _

The dose needed will be massive, but the attendant tells him not to worry. _“You’ll get a prescription downstairs for the pain, and you’ll need plenty of rest before your follow up next week, but your recovery time should be a snap. Two weeks if you’re perfect, but not more than a month even if there are complications-“_

He can feel the needle prick into his arm; as the room darkens even more. 

_ “You’re going to see those blue and red dots just above you, so you need to give me a thumbs up when you can see them come together into a purple dot. Then, I want you to just focus on that- breathe, and-“ _

He drifts off with a shock of sudden pain, and above him; the dots keep dancing. 

* * *

**One Month Later**

-

“You’re bleeding.” 

“ _Fuck-_ I know. Just get me the phone and I’ll get a Band Aid or something inside-“

Brock groans, pressing his bleeding thumb to the inside of his teeth, sucking on the salty copper taste there. Steve stands across from him, his eyes sparkling still in the midday sunlight. 

They’re on the deck of Brock’s new condo; trying to install a ledge, water glittering in the pool that he hadn’t been sure of at first, cool air blowing across the placid water, as his phone begins to ring. 

Steve holds it up, the screen flashing with a name that Brock doesn’t quite believe is really there. 

“ _ Seriously _ ?”, he whispers, taking it from Steve’s hands, while Steve only shrugs in return. His fingers fumble before he raises it to his ear. 

“Hello?” 

“Good morning, baby!” 

“Jo- Vanjie, it’s two in the afternoon.” 

“Vanjie? _Vanjie?_ This ain’t fuckin Vanjie!”, Jose laughs on the other end of the line, his voice as bright as the reflection of the sun on the pool tiles. “This is me, Jose your motherfucking business partner bitch!” 

“My- what-?” 

“ I been thinking, lookin’ at these pictures and shit, we really click when we’re together, don’t we? The children love us-“ 

Brock blinks, sighing as he leans down against the railing of his deck. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Hell yeah, I am! I’m not even drinking. But y’know, I just, kinda took some of my vacation time, and I’m trying to really hit the ground running. Silky’s got gigs all summer so I was thinking, who else’s am I gonna call?” 

Brock nods along with him. “Oh.” 

“So, what do you say? _The Branjie tour two-point-oh?_ ” 

“Jose I-“ 

He pauses before he speaks, glancing over at Steve, whose deep brown eyes stare, puzzled, at a point Brock thinks must be just in the center of his chest. 

“ _He got Wiped?_ ”, he mouthed at Steve, holding the phone away from the side of his face as Vanjie kept babbling on, something about a manager getting in contact; a dancer he wanted to lock down for their dates- all of it seeming very much like a runaway train into a place which Brock had thought by now; was behind him. 

He and Jose had become something; between friends and lovers and co-workers and- something else. They were close, he supposed, enough that it hadn’t been uncommon to drop in and out of each others lives now; without much notice as weeks and months would pass with nothing; a day in between long stretches of unanswered texts and dropped calls; filled with nothing but each other, as if there was nothing separating them from the very first time that they had met. 

“No _way_ he got Wiped. Maybe he dropped some of the serum but, c’mon- Jose? He’d never do that.”, Steve’s stage whisper was wet with the force of his words; carrying across the deck. 

“What does he want?”

“Something about a tour? He wants to bring-”, Brock sighs, embarrassment coloring his cheeks as he cocks his head towards the phone in his hand. “He wants to do a Branje tour-”

“He does _not._ ” 

“ _He just said-_ ”, Brock’s eyes widen for a moment, realizing the line’s still open, and Jose’s bubbly, incessant voice on the other end had ground to a halt. 

“Hello? You still there, Brock? Shit, if reception in this fuck ass place means I gotta repeat all I said-”

“Yes- yeah- I-” 

“ _Meet him._ ”, Steve mouths, shrugging, as if it means nothing at all. “ _Just, even if it’s just to find out what’s going on.”_

“Hey, where are you right now?” 

“Abbey.” 

_ “Order another watermelon martini for me, and give me- uh, 20 minutes." _

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve deleted my Tumblr account due to just finding the site as a whole difficult for my mental health, especially in the pandemic. I appreciate every comment, and if you would like to get in touch/talk more, you can contact me via discord: walrusmaterial#4640 (This is an anon account- the display picture is Vanya from TUA!)


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